The boss made me do it: multitasking still inefficient

Another year rolls by, another article highlights the dangers of multitasking …

Some people say that the way to succeed is to do one thing at once, and do it properly. Look at Gerald Ford, they say. See? See what happens when you walk and try to chew gum at the same time? Then along came the 1990s, computers, the Internet, and a generation of workers who may or may not have a legitimate claim to some sort of attention-deficit disorder. It's a good thing President Ford isn't on the job market now, as he'd need to be able to multitask a lot more than simple combined-ambulation/mastication in order to stand out among today's job seekers. Not so fast, according to Christine Rosen, a writer with The New Atlantis; multitasking is nothing but a con!

Now, stop me if you've heard this before. I thought I had, and you know what? I had, not once but twice in the past two years! In March 2006, Time said just the same thing. Then, in March 2007 the New York Times did, too. Here we are in June 2008, and now The New Atlantis has joined the call.

The complaints against multitasking are the usual; you're not as focused as you could be if you were just doing one thing at once, switching focus repeatedly actually makes you less productive as each time your brain takes a few moments to reprioritize tasks and so on. There are a number of scientific studies that back up many of these points, such as the one that showed that receiving e-mail messages affected volunteers' performance during IQ tests more than a toke on a joint, although I'm yet to hear of anyone smoking a spliff at work and trying to claim that it's not an issue because 'Bob over there is checking his e-mail."

I'll come out and say it: I don't think this reminder is going to have much of an impact on today's worker doing more than one thing at once. I confess, I'm one of them. Perhaps you are, too. Right now I should probably be doing something other than writing this post, but a look across my Macbook's screen and the obligatory external LCD (no one can adequately multitask with just one screen) I see an IM conversation, the gossip, gripes, and goings on in our electronic office (also known as an IRC channel), an app that I'm using to analyze microscope slides, an Excel spreadsheet, and then the full complement of e-mail, newsreader and browser windows. Between Exposé and tabbing between apps, I can flit from task to task, buzzing around like a crack-smoking housefly.

The fact that the Internet is always right there, and with it one's friends (e-mail, IM, etc), one's library (the web, obviously), and even the TV (YouTube, etc) mean that the duller everyday work tasks are practically invitations to alt-tab, F5, kthnxbai. Employers seek ever-greater productivity from their workers, which means getting more work from them for the same amount of pay. Faced with that situation, it's hardly surprising the cube-dweller responds by spending 15 minutes an hour looking at LOLCATs. Besides, I'm just old enough to remember the days before you used to be able to multitask; people used to sit at their desks reading the newspaper instead.